The Usual Suspects: The Imagined Years 2/2
Title: The Usual Suspects: The Imagined Years
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters or other places and things that anyone recognises.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: In The Usual Suspects I said Katara and Zuko were brainwashed into believing their lives had gone quite differently. This is that story.
Notes: I think I have a bunny warren in my brain now. All inconsistencies between this and The Usual Suspects are, naturally, my fault. I will ask you to go along with them, however, unless something really makes you crazy.
********************************
Zuko felt really awful. His mother had died so recently, he knew just how that felt. Worse though, Katara’s mom had died at the hands of Fire Nation troops. He certainly couldn’t imagine how terrible it would feel to know that he had been kidnapped by the same people who killed his mother. So he patted her on the back while she cried herself out.
When the sobs had died down and she was just sniffling a little, he asked, “Are you . . . um . . . done?”
That made her mad. “Well I’m so sorry that my feeling bad about my mom is so inconvenient,” she snapped.
“I just wanted to know if you were done crying or not!” he protested. “I wasn’t trying to say it was inconvenient.”
She gave him a suspicious look, but seemed to decide she wasn’t going to be mad any more. Which was good, because Zuko wanted to ask another question. Before he could, she exclaimed, “Oh no!”
“What is it?”
She pointed at him. “Your robe! It’s silk! Your nurses said that even water would stain them,” she said miserably. “I’m going to be in trouble. What if they don’t come out?”
“Then they don’t,” he informed her haughtily. “Anyhow, if I don’t want you in trouble, you won’t be.”
“Really?” she asked, looking doubtful. “I have lessons and things with your nurses and other people teaching me ettiquette. You’re not gonna be there all the time.”
“If I say so, they won’t punish you,” he told her. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to interfere, just that I don’t want punishments to interfere with what I want.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding.
Now he could ask his latest question. “I wanted to know something, though,” he informed her.
“What?” she asked. She also sighed after, looking put-upon.
“You don’t have any training for your bending?” he asked. “But wouldn’t your father send away for someone to train you if there weren’t any benders to teach you at the South Pole?” He’d really wanted to spar with a waterbender.
She looked miserable. “I asked once, and he said the Northern Tribe wasn’t talking to us any more.”
Zuko frowned. That didn’t sound right. “Why not?”
Katara shrugged. “I dunno. He just said that they thought we weren’t good enough for them or something. Like the fact that we didn’t have any more benders made us not as good.”
Well, that stank, Zuko thought. “So no one ever taught you anything?”
“No,” she said, pouting. “I mean, Gran-gran had one scroll with a few things on it, but it was really hard and Sokka always laughed at me.”
Zuko grumbled. “I know what that’s like. Azula’s always laughing at me when I’m bending. Like it’s funny that I’m not as good as her. Everything just comes so easy to her.”
“Why is she so mean and scary?” Katara asked him. “She wanted to have me flogged and executed for asking what the Fire Lord was going to do to me.”
“I don’t know,” Zuko said. “Except that Dad thinks it’s good that she’s like that and he doesn’t like it when I’m not.”
Katara got a look on her face that was a little like the look his mother had that time Azula tried to set the turtle ducks ablaze. She didn’t say anything, though.
They were separated again, more lessons for both of them. So while she was learning whatever it was body servants learned to be proper body servants, Zuko was learning the really boring history of the Fire Nation’s glorious victory over the Southern Water Tribe.
“. . . so when the great general Zotan had melted their primitve dwellings to the ground, he demanded they turn over all their benders as a sign of goodwill to the mighty Fire Nation-“
“What’s that mean?” Zuko asked, curiously.
“What does what mean, your highness?” asked his much put-upon tutor. Zuko had been asking lots of questions lately. Talking to Katara had told him there were stories his tutor wasn’t telling right. So he’d been asking to try to figure out the problems. He wanted the right facts, after all.
“Giving the benders to us as good will,” Zuko said. “Isn’t good will when you do someone a sort of favour so they’ll like you and do you a favour back later?”
“It is,” his tutor said through gritted teeth. He didn’t like the questions.
“Then how is that good will? They’re not going to get anything back, are they? What are they getting back for it later?”
It was the last straw for his tutor. “The favour is the Fire Nation choosing not to sweep down on them and wipe them off that miserable ice berg.” Before Zuko could express his surprise at that particularly blunt assessment, his tutor said, “If you are so interested in the savages at the South Pole, you can go to the library and research in the scrolls there on them. I expect a two-scroll essay on why the Fire Nation had to remove the threat of the Southern Water Tribe in three days.”
The man stormed out and Zuko was left to his own devices for the rest of his normal tutoring time. With nothing else to do, he headed to the library and started digging around in the scrolls to find something for his essay. “Water Tribes . . . Water Tribes . . .” he muttered as he looked up and down the shelves. He found the scrolls eventually and picked a bunch at random, since he was only nine and the librarian was giving him snooty looks and not helping with his research at all.
He was looking through the scrolls, when he found a really neat-looking picture. It was a waterbender, making some arcane gestures, and big sharp pieces of ice were flying through the air, clearly under his command. At the other side of the picture, a Fire Nation soldier was cowering away from them, clearly frightened.
Zuko suddenly recalled Katara saying that her Gran-gran had some scrolls of waterbending moves. That gave him an idea. He went poking around in the library, and discovered, far in the back, dusty and disused scrolls of bending techniques. Not just firebending, but water, earth and even some airbending techniques. Casually, Zuko sauntered back out, collected a bunch of notes about why the Fire Nation had to wipe out the Water Tribes, and waited until the librarian was gone on a break somewhere.
He scurried into the back, yanking off his outer robe, and collected as many of the scrolls as he could fit into the robe if he used it as a bag, stuffed some extras into the bag he’d brought for his essay research, and scampered off back to his rooms before the librarian got back.
Katara was looking disgruntled and practicing formal bows in front of his mirror when he came bursting in the door. She went off-balance, and fell over with a shriek.
“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded as he dumped his haul out onto the bed.
*******************
Katara glared at his royal jerkiness. “You scared me,” she groused.
He didn’t even have the grace to pretend to be repentant. “It’s just bows,” he said. “They’re easy.”
“Maybe for you,” she said. “But those scary ladies came in and stood there and they were mean and horrible and they said I had to practice until I get them right.” The two elderly women had stormed into her etiquette lessons and had dismissed her normal teachers. They had proceeded to poke and prod at her and say awful things until she’d wanted to cry.
“Were they twins?” Zuko asked, looking a little interested. “If they were two old lady twins, then it was Li and Lo. They’re Azula’s nurses.”
“They’re creepy,” Katara declared.
Zuko nodded. “They are. I think Azula likes them creepy, though.” Then his patience clearly wore out. “C’mere,” he said, grabbing her hand and dragging her to his bed. “Look at this!”
Katara knew this wasn’t what was important, but when she saw it, “Look at the dust all over your bed!” she shrieked. “It’s gonna take me forever to deal with that!”
“I’ll help you,” he said impatiently. “Look at the scrolls!”
Hesitantly, they really were very dusty and there was a dead spider on one, Katara unrolled a scroll. Before her wondering eyes, a picture of a waterbender moving water around and changing it into a pair of sharp knives was revealed. “Waterbending scrolls!” she breathed.
“Yes!” Zuko exclaimed happily. “There are some earth, fire and air ones too. I thought maybe you could learn waterbending from the scrolls, and I could learn something from the fire ones that I could use to finally beat Azula!” He was going to say more, but suddenly he was tackled by a happy and hugging waterbending girl who was babbling in her excitement.
“Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!” she squealed in her joy. She’d finally be able to learn waterbending.
It took some time for Zuko to find them a place where they could both practice out of sight of prying eyes, but when he did, Katara started spending every spare moment she could there, even sneaking out in the middle of the night to practice. It was only a few weeks, but it turned out to be just in time for her.
The height of a Fire Nation summer hit. If she hadn’t been able to make herself ice cubes and cold drinks instantly, Katara was sure she would have melted. Zuko declared her the best servant in the whole palace when she was able to stick a giant block of ice under the big fan in his room to make the breeze on him even cooler.
He poked his head into her room where she was practicing her bending by making a bucket of cold water coat her whole body while she lay on her bed in nothing but her underwear. “Katara!”
“Yes?” she asked, sitting up a little.
“Would- What are you doing?” Zuko asked.
“Keeping cool.”
He looked at her a little enviously, then shook himself. “I need you to serve tea for me and Uncle.”
Katara sighed and got up, sending the water back to its bucket and getting dressed. She’d stopped even thinking about modesty once the heat had hit. All those times she’d wondered about all those Fire Nation people wearing almost nothing were forgotten when she’d realised wearing almost nothing was the thing to do when the heat was likely to make you melt. However, there was a certain bare modicum that was needed to be decent if you were serving tea to the Fire Lord’s brother.
She arrived in the room to find the other servants had already laid out the various serving dishes for the food, and that there was a piping hot pot of tea waiting. She went out and started serving, trying not to pay attention to the conversation between the prince and his uncle. She’d been told that good servants didn’t hear anything but what was addressed directly to them, so she tried very hard not to notice.
Katara did, however, knowing how much Zuko disliked tea on a cold day, nevermind a hot one, chill her master’s tea to ice cold as she poured for him. Zuko picked it up, sipped delicately and shot her a startled look. She just smiled at him. “Thank you, Katara,” he said.
“I do not suppose you would do me a similar favour, young waterbender?” the general asked.
A chill that had nothing to do with her bending slipped down Katara’s spine. “I- I beg your pardon?” she asked, hoping he meant something else. She didn’t want to be noticed by the Fire Lord, and if his brother noticed her . . .
When she froze, Zuko covered for her. She never knew whether he was doing things for himself or because he was nice - although he was sort of nice sometimes, he was also pretty spoiled and she wasn’t sure which was prompting him half the time - but she was grateful anyhow. “What favour, Uncle?” he asked.
“Why, of cooling my tea similarly to how she cooled yours, nephew,” came the reply.
*****************
Zuko knew he had to hide Katara’s waterbending from everyone. His father wouldn’t be happy one of the enemy was learning how to use her bending against them (even though he knew he could beat her, so what was the problem?) and his uncle was nice, but really weird. And really weird was a dangerous unknown. So he bit his lip a moment and then faked taking a sip while he hastily breathed heat back into the tea. He was sorry, because the cold tea had been really nice.
He handed his now-hot cup to his uncle and said, “I don’t think that’s all that cooled, but if you want, we can trade, Uncle.”
Uncle Iroh’s eyebrows shot up, and he said, “My mistake,” as he felt the hot teacup.
For the rest of the meal, Katara was nervous and didn’t cool anything else. Which was a pity, because Zuko liked frozen melon, but it really wasn’t a good idea for anyone to know she’d been practicing. When his uncle left, she collapsed, shaking, into the chair the man had vacated. “Spirits,” she said. “I was so scared.”
“It’s okay,” he said, trying to soothe her. “Even if Uncle had found out, he’s really nice. He probably wouldn’t have told anyone if I’d asked.”
“You think?” she said, looking at him hopefully.
Zuko nodded. “Uh-huh.” Then he grinned. “There’s some time now. Do you have anything you need to do? ‘Cause we could go practice.”
Katara grinned back at him. “Yeah!”
As they raced through the halls, slipping behind columns and hiding in doorways to avoid being detected, Zuko grinned happily himself. He liked training with Katara. She’d finally learned enough to start sparring a little, and it was so different how water worked from fire. It made the sparring really interesting. Also, when he was practicing with her, she’d say nice things and wouldn’t laugh at him when he messed up the way Azula did. Sometimes she even made some really interesting suggestions. They didn’t always work, but it was fun for a change.
In fact, as the weeks passed, Zuko found himself improving rapidly. Having the chance to practice without someone either breathing down his neck because he wasn’t good enough yet, or laughing at him because he wasn’t a genius, but just a normal kid, did wonders.
It had been six months since Katara came to the palace when Zuko found himself called in front of his father to spar with Azula. He’d been avoiding it because he hated seeing the disappointment on his father’s face, and worse, hearing that infuriating giggle that would erupt from Azula no matter what he did. It didn’t matter if he was simply taking his position at the far end of the arena or if he made some mistake, she’d laugh at him, then her friends would laugh at him. It always made him so mad. He’d never laughed at her when she’d first started, making her own dumb mistakes. He never laughed at her when something embarrassing happened to her. He tried to be a good big brother.
He didn’t want to go, but he had to. Right before he went in, Katara told him, “I know you said you hate this lots. Don’t let her annoy you.”
“How’m I supposed to do that?” he grumbled at her.
She gently bonked him on the head with a fist. “Remember what I told you? She’s not laughing ‘cause she thinks anything’s funny. She’s laughing to get to you mess up. So assume that any time she’s laughing it doesn’t mean anything. ‘Cause it doesn’t.”
“But-“
“No ‘buts’,” she said sternly wagging a finger at him. She looked ridiculous. An eight-year-old girl, trying to look like a stern, nagging fishwife. It made him feel better. “Don’t forget that thing you worked out with the torches.”
Then he was being called in, and she was racing off to ‘get a good seat’. Zuko marched into the arena and saw his sister there. She spotted him and started giggling. He just wanted to throttle her. Then he remembered what Katara said. Azula wasn’t finding anything funny. So he ignored her. For the first time, too, it really didn’t bother him, once he refused to let it bother him. He marched forward, bowed to his father and just set himself in his ready position. He didn’t bother asking Azula if she was ready. He just watched his father out of the corner of his eye and waited for the nod that indicated they were to start.
Azula’s giggles were suddenly sounding strained. She actually sounded like she was faking all of a sudden, and she looked upset. Like he was supposed to be doing something and wasn’t. Zuko felt a grin stretch over his lips. Katara was a genius. When his father gave the nod, he followed Katara’s other bit of advice. He’d told her he always waited until Azula was ready and did the honourable thing. It meant she always wound up getting the first strike in. Katara had said, “Look. If the fight starts when the Fire Lord nods or whatever, then just start when he nods. If he’s anything like how you describe him, he’ll think it’s a good thing that you just go after her.”
So while Azula had both hands over her mouth at the far end of the arena, Zuko watched his father out of the corner of his eye, waiting for the nod. When he saw it, he didn’t wait, didn’t broadcast a move, he just leapt forward blasting at Azula. She managed to block him, but it was just barely. It stopped all the giggling too.
They fought, and she was outmatching him, but it was a lot closer than before and Zuko grinned happily. It felt good to give a good showing. Suddenly she brought her arms around in a new move. He hadn’t seen it before. It was one of those stupid advanced moves no one would show him because he wasn’t as good as Azula. His stupid sister knew it too. He saw her winding up to giggle.
Then he saw the torch and remembered Katara’s words as he walked in. “Don’t forget that thing you worked out with the torches.”
Moving the fluid way he’d seen Katara move while she was practicing her waterbending, he twisted, reaching out and catching Azula’s fire. Swinging around, he felt his inner flame rising fast to meet the other fire. Before he could be scorched from the inside out, he released it all in a wave at Azula.
The giant ball of flame hit her and sent her flying backwards, slamming the princess into the wall behind her.
“Azula!” came Ty-Lee’s voice.
Zuko felt so happy he could burst. He won. He beat her. He turned to his father and bowed, then looked up.
“I am most pleased, Prince Zuko,” his father said with a slow smile. “Perhaps you are worthy of our family after all.”
Keeping a tight lid on his joy, such displays would be unseemly, Zuko bowed again. “I thank you father, for your gracious words.”
Azula was on her feet by then, screeching, “He cheated!”
“How?” Zuko asked, affronted that she, of all people, would accuse him of cheating.
Fire Lord Ozai looked at his youngest. “Yes, Princess, how?” he asked, with deceptive mildness.
“I’ve never seen that move before,” she said, pouting. “I’m more advanced than he is. Obviously he must have cheated by using some bending technique from one of the inferior benders of air, earth or water.”
His father raised an eyebrow. “Is this true, Prince Zuko?”
Off to the side, Zuko saw Katara, saw her mouthing something. He didn’t have to read her lips, though, to know what she was saying. “Don’t let ‘em scare you.”
“I invented a firebending technique, borrowing from techniques I learned from scrolls in the library,” Zuko declared. “Although the Fire Nation is superior, I don’t see why we can’t use the skills of the other nations for our own gain if one should be useful.” He looked his father in the eye, trying to balance between challenging him, and being respectful enough. “I have not been given the advanced tutelage Azula has, so I have made a way to even the playing field. Without cheating.”
For the first time in longer than Zuko could recall, his father took his side and proudly had his son sit at his right hand at dinner. Azula was forced into Zuko’s usual place further down the table. It was a great day, and when he was finally able to make it back to his room, Zuko ran in and practically tackled Katara in a hug.
“Thank you!” he exclaimed. He grinned at her. She smiled back, and helped him get ready for bed.
*********************
The next four years were good years. With Katara as his personal servant, Zuko never had to worry about his personal affairs being told to anyone else, and with Zuko as Katara’s master, she was able to learn waterbending.
However, it was also a time during which Zuko learned a lot about the world outside the palace, and about what the war his father was waging against the rest of the world was doing to people outside the Fire Nation. He kept his opinions to himself in public, but the sheer unfairness of how Katara’s people had been treated made him cringe.
Katara learned how to manoeuvre in the bed of snakes that was the Fire Nation court. Her position as Zuko’s personal body servant made her unassailable by many of the higher servants, but caution was still warranted. Zuko knew this, and had been looking for a way to help out his best friend, since she had become his best friend. He wanted her to be free, but it had to be done cautiously.
When he was thirteen, he was called to his father’s office after one of his still-infrequent training victories over Azula.
“You wished to see me, father?” he inquired, kneeling.
His father told him, “Rise, Prince Zuko. You have, in recent years, begun to live up to the expectations I had of you when you were younger. Perhaps you will never equal your sister’s competence and skill, but you are no longer an embarrassment to the royal family.”
“My Lord is very kind,” Zuko murmured, bowing his head and peeking up through his eyelashes at his father. He had no other choice. Being told he was inadequate rankled, but there was nothing else to be done.
His father smiled slightly and said, “You have reached a significant age, my son. There are . . . certain needs you will wish to fulfil as you begin your path to manhood.” Zuko waited. He had no idea where this was going, but it seemed his father had some sort of plan for him. “I have asked the youngest of my concubines to assist you in your education on these matters,” his father declared.
Zuko’s head snapped up. His uncle had spoken to him about the interactions between men and women, and Katara had told him of the extremely blunt summation she had received with the other servant girls on the matters of contraception and sex. He swallowed as he saw the scantily-clad young woman come in. “I . . .” don’t want this. I don’t need this. Uncle said what I needed to know. Isn’t she your concubine? A million responses were on his lips, but all he dared say was the expected reply. “Thank you, My Lord.”
“You are most welcome, Prince Zuko,” said the Fire Lord. “I expect you are quite eager to begin this education. You may both leave.” They were dismissed and Zuko found himself blindly following the young lady up to his rooms.
When they walked in, Katara was waiting. Zuko felt quite horrified at the thought of Katara seeing or listening to . . . things. “Katara, you . . .” he tried to show her with his eyes that he was putting on a show. “Will leave us now. I will expect you to return for your duties in . . .” he glanced at the young lady he was supposed to do . . . stuff with. “Four hours.”
Katara shot him an indecipherable look as she passed him, but she left without protesting or commenting. Then he was alone with the woman. She smiled, comfortingly, and told him, “Allow me, your highness.”
She took his hand and led him to the bed. Then she helped him out of his clothes and touched him a lot. It felt pretty good, but it also felt weird. The not-good sort of weird. Like his body liked it a lot, but his head thought it didn’t feel right. When he’d tired, she picked up her things, dressed, and left him. Zuko fell asleep and found himself being poked awake by a worried looking Katara. “What’s going on?” she demanded. “You don’t look right.”
He sat up, still feeling pretty weird. “Father insisted that I . . . um . . . use one of his concubines. He said some stuff about needs and just . . .” he gestured vaguely around him. Then suddenly he reached out and pulled Katara onto the bed with him. Wrapping his arms around her, Zuko clung to her. “I don’t feel right,” he muttered into her shoulder. “It feels like I did something wrong.”
She hugged him back. “It’s okay,” she told him. “I . . . it’ll be okay.”
Details spilled out of him that he hadn’t even thought he’d noticed. Everything about the whole tryst had felt off. She’d touched him and made him peak and all that stuff, but even when she’d had him panting and aggressively taking a position on top, he’d felt like he wasn’t in control. Like she was doing something wrong to him.
Katara had stayed with him night after night while he had night terrors about it. About this woman coming and turning into his father then the man growing to a million feet tall and finally opening his mouth wider and wider until he ate Zuko and the whole world with him. Worse, his father had thrown open the palace concubinage for Zuko and expected him to partake. It meant he had to, because he didn’t want to lose what little approval he got from his father. Not so much any more for the sake of the approval, just that if he lost his privileges, be might lose Katara.
He got past his distaste for using the concubines by one simple expedient. One month after the first one, Zuko had started dreaming about Katara. She’d been next to him, doing the things the first concubine had done to him. The funny thing was, when it was Katara, it felt good, and it felt right. At least, in his dreams it did. Waking up hard and reaching for her was really weird, though, and he didn’t tell her. He didn’t want her to think he was going to make her do anything.
The thought wouldn’t leave him, though, and it only intensified when he realised that his father’s personal concubines had a rank at least equal to that of the lowest noblemen within the court. If he made Katara his concubine when she turned thirteen, the legal age for such things, she would cease to be a slave. She’d be a freewoman with rank and the ability to own property and everything. There were retired concubines who lived within the Fire Nation capital doing quite well for themselves, running businesses or just living off the gifts they’d received from former masters.
Finally, he proposed the idea to Katara so that she could either accept or reject it. “What do you think?” he asked when he’d finished explaining the advantages.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean . . . I’m only twelve. It’s hard to think of doing . . . that . . . especially with you.” He didn’t smooth his face fast enough and she caught his disappointed expression. “You’ve been thinking about . . . it . . . with me. Haven’t you?” she asked.
“I don’t want to make you do anything,” Zuko said, hastily. “I can’t help what my head does when I’m sleeping, either.”
Katara nodded. “I know.”
************************
When Zuko had proposed he have his father make her into the Prince’s first personal concubine, her first reaction had been to slap him. When he’d started explaining about freed slaves and business opportunities, she realised this was more than him being a jerk. When she said it felt odd to think of being intimate with him, the look on his face had been weird. A bit of disappointment, yes. But he’d had another look that she couldn’t quite place. It was a little like the look he had when he talked about his mother.
So that look decided her. She agreed because he was her friend, he’d saved her and helped her learn to bend and she trusted him. If he said he was doing this to help her, she would believe him. It was a very good thing she trusted him, because a few weeks after he made his decision there was an incident that exposed her waterbending. An Earth Kingdom assassin had made it into the palace and tried to kill the royal family. Katara didn’t care in the slightest if anything happened to Azula or the Fire Lord, but she spotted the man with his crossbow aiming at Zuko. She’d reacted on instinct to protect her friend, every pitcher and cup of water-based liquid on the table exploding up into a shield of ice that stopped the bolt from hurting him. Another fluid motion and she had the man frozen inside a block of ice on his perch.
That was when she realised what she’d done.
“Zuko,” said the Fire Lord, even as he signalled his guards to dispose of the interloper. “I thought, when you first asked for the waterbender, that I told you to keep her under control. It would seem you failed, as she has clearly learned how to use her bending.”
“My Lord,” Zuko said, dropping into a deep bow. “I had intended to surprise you with the success of my plan.”
“Your . . . plan?” The Fire Lord seemed intrigued enough that he would give Zuko the rope to hang himself with. It was better than nothing.
“Yes, my Lord. I wished to . . . educate the girl in the superiority of the Fire Nation’s ways,” Zuko said. Katara could tell he was improvising, and hoped desperately that she was the only one. “Think of how demoralising to our enemies it will be when they realise one of their own is so dedicated to our cause as to save the very life of the Fire Lord with the bending they would say should be dedicated to his destruction.”
The smile on that evil man’s face was terrifying. He turned to her, and said, “Waterbender, come here and answer my questions.”
“Yes, my Lord,” she said, hastily abasing herself.
“Would you say the Fire Nation is superior to all others?” he asked.
Katara swallowed and spat out the company line she’d learned from observing Zuko’s own lessons. “The Fire Nation is the greatest and most progressive of all our elemental nations,” she said.
“Would you return to the Water Tribes if given the opportunity?” he asked, sounding casual.
In a heartbeat. “Never.” She lied firmly. “I would never wish to return to those savages. I am now more of the Fire Nation than the Water Tribe.”
“Will you swear me an oath to this effect?” he asked.
“I swear, upon the power of Agni, and the wisdom and might this Nation has shown this humble slave, that I wish to be nowhere but in this nation and subject to the will of its great Fire Lord. I will breathe my last breath in service to the Islands of Fire.” Hidden from the Fire Lord’s view by the angle of her bow, Katara crossed her fingers. She was lying as she said the oath, and at least this way she could say she wasn’t forsworn if it came up. It was the best she could do on short notice.
The Fire Lord laughed with delight. “Zuko! This is the greatest achievement of yours yet! Come. Speak to me of your waterbender.”
Katara was dismissed and waited in Zuko’s rooms, fiddling with things and trying not to have a complete nervous breakdown. When he came back, he looked at her and then nodded. “You’re going to have to put in some appearances as the Fire Nation’s token waterbender, but it’s okay.”
“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed, flinging herself at him in a hug. “I just saw the man and he was aiming the crossbow at you and I thought he was gonna kill you and I was scared and I just reacted and I’m so sorry for putting you in that position, thank you so much-“
********************
Zuko couldn’t help himself. He kissed her. He’d been terrified his father would have her executed, and he’d only managed to keep his father from claiming her as a concubine by stating his own intentions of keeping her. As time passed, his dreams about her had gotten more intense, and she was getting prettier by the day. The tight red servant’s uniform she wore, the golden chains that were a symbol of her slavery, all of it made her look so very pretty.
There was a startled pause, then Katara pulled slowly away. “Zuko?” she asked.
“Sorry,” he said, breathing heavily. “I . . . I just really wanted to kiss you.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding surprised.
Then he explained what he’d had to do to her. She agreed, understanding how things worked in the Fire Nation court and that he was just protecting her as best he could.
The following months leading up to her thirteenth birthday were some of the longest of Zuko’s life. After Katara told him that she’d be checked, regularly, by a doctor who would know whether or not she was still a maiden, Zuko took to visiting the harem in the hopes of garnering skill in bed. He did it on the sly, but he wanted to make sure that, if he was going to have to take Katara without her particularly wanting it, that he could at least make it pleasant for her. That said, the anticipation was killing him. He came back from tutoring one afternoon to find her in full formal dress with Li and Lo insisting that they begin to make public appearances together, since she was to be his formal escort at all occasions if he had no noblewoman to accompany him.
Katara was wearing makeup which emphasised her exotic blue eyes, her hair was in a beautiful pile of curls on top of her head, letting him see the sweep of her shoulders and neck without obstruction. She looked so lovely, he’d wanted to start using all those things he’d learned with his father’s concubines right then.
Finally, the night came and Zuko was careful and cautious and delicate and Katara told him it had been good, but weird and she didn’t want to again. She kept her old room, he had to train a new body servant, this one male, and Katara was finally able to train with him in public. That was an amazing day. Especially since he got to watch her defeat his sister handily. That made him really happy.
It was after the training ‘accident’ with Azula that they found out Katara could heal. He’d been sparring with Azula, and had clearly told her he was stopping. He’d lowered his hands and stepped away. So naturally, she sent a fistful of fire straight at his face. Zuko staggered away, unable to keep a scream from escaping his lips. He was dimly aware that Katara was in front of him, and felt a brief sense of added pain from a touch on his face, then wonderfully numbing cold. The pain began to fade and his eyesight began to slowly clear.
There was a blue sort of haze in front of his eyes, and through it he could see Katara’s surprised, but concentrating face. Suddenly someone or something yanked her away from him, hard, and the pain came back. It was much less than before, but the suddenness of the return of the pain again was too much for his traumatised system and Zuko passed out. When he woke, he was in his room, on his bed, and Katara was curled up next to him, her head on his chest.
Something felt odd about his face, though. Zuko carefully lifted a hand and began to feel his face. One side was normal. The other . . .
“I’m sorry,” Katara said miserably.
He sat up and stared at her. Her voice sounded odd, somehow. Not like there was something wrong with her voice, but that there was something wrong with his ears. “For what? What happened?”
She swallowed. “Azula . . . Azula set your face on fire,” she said. “I was trying to bend cold water over you. I was trying to help.”
Zuko smiled, a little hesitantly. “I’m sure you did.”
“I was able to heal you,” she said, wonderingly. “Somehow the water started glowing and fixing the burns. They just . . . vanished.” Then her face changed and her lips pursed briefly in anger. “I wasn’t able to finish. They pulled me away, and by the time I was able to get back, it was too late to fix the rest of the scarring.”
“Scarring?” Zuko gasped. “What . . . I need a mirror,” he said, trying to get out of the bed.
“Wait,” she grabbed his hand, trying to keep him on the bed. “You . . . the doctor said you had a severe trauma . . . you shouldn’t be getting up-“
Zuko pulled away and rushed to the bathroom. Stretching up over the left side of his face, from just over his eyebrow to just below his cheekbone, covering everything as it tapered off, including his ear, was scar tissue, dark, shiny and oddly wrinkled. “My face,” he said. Katara was standing in the door, tears in her eyes.
“I tried. They held me back, and I kept saying they should let me finish healing you, it worked on everything else, but I couldn’t get away-“
What she was saying penetrated. “I remember. My whole face was burned. You healed the rest of the burns?”
“Everything I could until they stopped me,” she told him. “I . . . I should have known. I saw a reference in a scroll a few weeks ago about healing. I should have looked into it.” Katara was losing herself in self-recrimination.
He couldn’t stand that. This was no one’s fault but Azula’s and he wasn’t going to let Katara, who’d saved most of his face where no one else could have saved anything, blame herself for other people holding her back. “It’s not your fault. You healed me. You healed everything you could. I’m not . . . I’m not totally disfigured because of you, Katara.”
“But I-“
“Don’t,” he told her. Then something unexpected happened. They kissed.
Soon Zuko was pulling her back to his bed, feeling her respond to him with all the enthusiasm that had been lacking their first, fairly enforced, time. She undulated against him, like the water she bended so well, and tugged frantically at his sleeping clothes, thrusting her hands inside and under them to touch his bare skin.
He’d just gotten her out of her things when the door opened with a bang. No knocking, no calling through, the person just slammed into the room. “Oh Zuzu!” said Azula. “What’s-“
She stopped dead at the sight of her brother’s naked backside as he straddled Katara. “Do you mind, Azula?” Zuko asked her. “I’m in the middle of something. Is this important?”
“Father wanted to see you,” she said.
“We’ll finish this later,” he told Katara.
She smiled up at him and pressed a kiss to the inside of a wrist. “We will. I’ll see you later.”
It turned out, contrary to Azula’s expectations, his father was put out with his daughter and had offered his son a favour to make up for Azula’s, “Careless actions creating a flaw in the appearances of our family.”
Zuko had come back and curled up in bed with Katara, no longer in any sort of mood for bedroom gymnastics. “I hate it. I hate that he only cares because Azula aimed to make me ugly, so he’s upset the family portraits won’t be pretty enough anymore.”
“I’ve been thinking,” Katara said. “We need to get out. Both of us. I don’t want to be faithful to the people that killed my mother, and he’s just . . . you know he’s stringing you along. Azula will get the throne, we both know it. You don’t want to wind up like your uncle, do you?”
Zuko sat up, frowning at her. “What do you mean?”
“He’s a great general, yes, but he’s got no power, no influence, he’s just . . . here. Running around at his younger brother’s beck and call. Do you want to wind up like that with Azula?” Katara laid a hand over his. “You don’t need to decide today, but I want to leave. I will leave.”
She was right, of course. About all of it. “We will leave,” he told her, wrapping his fingers around her hand. “We just need to plan. I don’t want to leave only to get picked up and dragged back for treachery.”
Katara smiled, cupping her other hand around his cheek. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” he corrected her. “If it weren’t for you, I don’t know where I’d be now.” He leaned down, gently pressing his lips to hers. She responded rather ardently, and they wound up finishing what they’d started hours before.
When they were curled up together in the bed, Katara asked, “What were you going to tell me before? You said you’d asked your father for a favour on my behalf.”
Zuko nodded. “I told him about your healing, and he agreed it would be very good if you were available for ‘miraculous’ healing. You have free access to the library and the doctors to see what you can learn.”
“Oh, Zuko!” she kissed him, which led to other fun activities.
From then on, they were able to train, publicly, Katara was able to hone her skills, and as long as she made enough statements about how much she loved the Fire Nation, people came to trust her. They plotted off and on to find a way to escape, but no good, feasible opportunities presented themselves until Azula was sent off on a mission to capture the Avatar, who had recently resurfaced after a century of being missing, and General Iroh, who had left the Fire Nation and stood accused of treachery at the siege of the Northern Water Tribe. She sent Zuko a letter, demanding that he come join her at Ba Sing Se to take the city, Avatar and General all at once.
“This is it!” he told Katara excitedly. “Think about it. We’ll be away from the Fire Nation and we can start running from there.”
Reading over his shoulder, Katara pointed at a line in the letter. “There are Water Tribesmen nearby,” she told him. “I should be able to get help. Maybe I’d even know some of them. We can say that you’re a nobleman or something. You helped me escape from the ‘Evil Prince Zuko’, and then we can leave with them.”
The plan was set. All they had to do was get to Ba Sing Se and work out the details.
With freedom so suddenly close at hand, Zuko hastily scrambled to a drawer he’d been guarding zealously for days. “Katara?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“When we’re out. When . . . when I stop being the prince . . .” He had them clutched tightly in his hands.
“What do you want to ask, Zuko?” she inquired. She was sitting on his bed, and she just looked so right there. Wearing his clothes, so comfortable in his space. In their space.
“Marry me?” he blurted. He held out the combs that had belonged to his mother out. “I mean . . . we’ll just be people and there won’t be any rank to cause prob- Mmmmph!”
She was kissing him. Then she stopped to pepper kisses all over his face, saying between each one, “Yes, yes, yes, yesyesyesyesyesyesyes!”
He was rather disgruntled, many weeks later, to discover that his mother’s engagement combs had actually been missing for six years and that he had to buy Katara a new set because they'd only imagined the proposal.
Part 1
The Usual Suspects: Incidents and Accidents
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